Category Archives: Environment, Nature, & Health

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Today in the wee hours of the morning Wikileaks leaked the text of the environmental chapter of the ultra-secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is every bit as bad as expected, allowing corporations to exploit and degrade natural resources without consequence. See:

We reiterate our opposition to the TPP and to FAST TRACK legislation, which has now been introduced into the Senate (S 1900) and the House (HR 3830). Congress has constitutional authority over trade agreements and Fast Track is an attempt by the executive branch to evade Congressional oversight and is a subversion of the democratic process and a nullification of checks and balances put into place by Hamilton in order to avoid just this type of scenario.

We are thrilled to learn that the brave activists who risked their lives and freedom in their efforts to save the Arctic as well as the two members of the punk protest band Pussy Riot have been granted amnesty by the Russian Parliament along with thousands of other prisoners!

We want to thank activists worldwide who stood up in protest to the outrageous arrest and imprisonment of Pussy Riot for nearly two years for exercising their freedom of speech and activists who protested the seizing of the Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise, and false, trumped-up charges of “piracy” with which these courageous people have been charged and held for the past four months. There were 860 protests in 46 countries, and more than 2.6 million people emailing the Russian embassy according to Greenpeace.

The sad truth we are left with in the case of the Arctic is that drilling is set to begin any day, and the fight to preserve freedom of speech is ongoing so we must persevere and fight on. Although this move was likely a calculated one aimed at appeasing world opinion prior to the 2014 Sochi Olympics, this is a moment to celebrate and send thanks to activists and the Russian Parliament for ending this injustice!

The worldwide threat that Fukushima represents is being ignored by the mainstream media (what a surprise) while tons of radioactive cesium are dumping into the Pacific Ocean as we write and contaminating the West Coast. Thankfully, we have alternative press that is getting the word out because this situation requires a global response in order to contain this unprecedented disaster. See the following sources for crucial information:

It is crucial to call your representatives in Congress and tell them to oppose Fast Tracking the TPP. Go to: www.house.gov/representatives to find your representative. Tell him or her to vote NO ON FAST TRACK!!

The country is in a terrible state and we activists are run ragged trying to deal with endless permutations of corporate abuse and government corruption, running around like the proverbial headless chicken after all the assaults on our civil liberties, human rights, the environment, workers’ rights, the social safety net, women’s rights, a free and open Internet, and on and on. There is, however, one overarching source of these problems which encompasses all the others, ties them together, and once one understands its significance, explains what otherwise would be an overwhelming array of separate, disparate, insoluble predicaments over which we might throw up our hands in despair.

Regardless of the concern, all of them are traceable back to the corporate “personhood” abuse of our system and subversion of our democracy. Take any issue you like from foreign policy to food production and we can see how the corporate world has monopolized and controlled it for the purpose of amassing enormous wealth at the rest of our expense. How has it managed to do this? By utilizing the misbegotten legal doctrines of corporate “personhood” and money as “speech” that came in through the back door by way of the Supreme Court’s being taken over by some old corporate attorneys back in 1886. This precedent, set by what was actually a clerk’s summation of the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, has been wreaking havoc ever since.

Let me give you an example. Pretend for a moment that you are a poor, beleaguered billionaire who owns a pharmaceutical company and say you have this nifty new drug you want to foist on the public and there are all these pesky regulations that require you to actually test it first to make sure that it doesn’t cause birth defects, cancer, or premature death. What do you do?

Well rather than wring your hands in desperate frustration, you get to work and go out and lobby congress, bribe some politicians, buy a few elections in key districts, gobble up some tv stations and start disseminating disinformation about how safe and wonderful and life-enhancing it is, place some corporate shills in some key agencies like the FDA, get a few judges in your pocket, corrupt some research, patent some human genomes, challenge whatever laws or regulations may be on the books or slipped through congress that are cramping your go-getter, capitalist style and go to court under the commerce clause and argue that your “right” to make obscene profits off of people’s suffering is being hampered, and voila, you’ve got your drug approved!

If all of that doesn’t work, go to court on the basis of corporate “personhood” and argue that your “rights” under the Bill of Rights have been infringed upon and that you should be compensated by the taxpayers for all your pain and suffering at outrageously being required to actually do business legitimately! That will show those do-gooders and bleeding hearts that corporations are people too and your feelings are mightily hurt!

Now if we actually had a free press rather than a corporate-owned press, journalists could challenge this kind of propaganda and corruption, but once again, because of corporate rule and undue influence allowing them to dictate and even write many laws, impact policies of government agencies, not pay taxes, get government subsidies (i.e. corporate welfare) so they can amass billions, these corporations, owned by the 1%, can buy up all the news media they like and monopolize the message and go to court endlessly and challenge every law, regulation, and restriction until they get what they want. Case in point: the Koch Bros. are trying to buy the Tribune now (in addition to elections and politicians). As if Rupert Murdoch controlling the flow of information were not enough!

The corporation has been allowed to run amok, enabled by an increasingly corrupt government, becoming so enmeshed, that more and more the corporate world and government are indistinguishable from one another. In addition, the press has been taken over by the 1% and commandeered to be nothing more than corporate copywriters dispensing its pre-approved messaging, rather than doing its job of challenging and exposing this merger and sabotage of our democratic process.

Corporate “personhood” is the root cause of how nothing is working any more, like it did when FDR was President for instance, because it is a cancer that has metastasized throughout our entire political system and mortally infected it by eliminating all the safeguards and checks and balances on the abuse of power. It is as if the immune system has been disabled so that there is no longer any effective response to the opportunistic disease of corruption–a system that was previously capable of throwing off illness is no longer healthy enough to do so.

The patient has succumbed and is in its death throes unless we intervene and pass a Constitutional amendment to restore our democracy by excising corporate “personhood” and money as “speech,” the only remedy to this dire situation. We can no longer afford to offer the patient palliative relief by chasing symptom after symptom (though that billionaire big pharma owner would love us to do so). We must go for the all-out cure because democracy is all-but-dead and our Constitutionally-protected right to a government of, by, and for the PEOPLE, not the CORPORATION, is null and void if we do not.

There may be a plethora of problems, but fortunately the solution is elegantly simple: stop chasing the symptoms and attack the root cause of corporate “personhood.”

Breaking news: Boxer and De Fazio introduce bill today to require labeling of genetically modified food in the United States. If it passes, hopefully we can avoid eating Frankenfood, or at least know it if we are. Check out these links:

Due to the malfeasance of Wall Street banksters causing the mortgage crisis and the world economy to crash, and now the corporate puppets in congress insisting on austerity, we are experiencing an epidemic of hunger, poverty, and homelessness. Predatory banks have foreclosed upon people illegally, jobs have vanished, and we the people are being dispossessed.

Unchecked carbon emissions have altered the atmosphere and the resulting climate change is causing record droughts and famines. At the same time, our food supply is being threatened and controlled like never before. Pesticide companies like Monsanto have patented genetically-modified seeds that can withstand toxic chemicals like the neonicotinoids research has identified as responsible for the destruction of bee colonies and are pushing Frankenfood onto consumers, without GMO labelling.

We are facing a worldwide crisis perpetrated by corporate giants who would extend their corporate rule through the abuse of our Bill of Rights by corporate “personhood” nationally, and globally by “treaties” like the TPP. Citizens, voters, consumers are the losers and we must join together and fight for our right to decent work at a liveable wage, affordable housing, and a safe and nutritious food supply.

Climate change is a serious threat to life on this planet. Due to the overuse of fossil fuels, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rise causing drought, glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise, the frequency and severity of hurricanes and noreasters like the recent Sandy mega-storm, to increase. We MUST take steps to reverse this trend and turn to greener alternatives such as wind, solar, and geothermal sources of power, which we have in abundance.

The only reason this shift has not occurred is the greed of the billionaire class who own the fossil fuel industry and the collusion our government through the subversion of our democracy and the capture of our regulatory agencies. The core reason for this is corporate “personhood” which has been abused by the corporate world to claim they have rights equivalent to human beings. This must stop. Take a look at the videos below for some graphic and serious explanations of the impact of global warming and what we can do to stop it and check out Move to Amend for more information about corporate “personhood” and money as “speech” and what you can do to help pass a constitutional amendment to end these two illegitimate legal doctrines that have hampered environmental progress at every turn.